HD playback with ATI 4670

[vividweb]

I have an ATI 4670 in my main desktop and want to start using it for SageTV. I have only the Arcsoft software installed on the machine and it plays back HD-PVR recordings perfectly. However I cannot get good playback of H.264 content recorded with my Genpix DVB card. The files will playback perfectly using the arcsoft player (software that came with the HD-PVR) and using Windows Media Player, but stutter and are un-watchable in SageTV.

I have added the following lines into the properties file on the client machine:

videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Video Decoder
videoframe/ac3_audio_decoder_filter=AC3Filter
videoframe/audio_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Audio Decoder HD
videoframe/audio_render_filter=Default DirectSound Device
videoframe/video_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Video Decoder

always_use_dshow_player=true

The drivers are using DXVA (with windows XP) as I"m getting very little CPU utilization when the files are playing. The file will play for a 30 seconds or so, then will stutter, then play fine again for a while. The CPU does not change when the stuttering starts. Anyone have any suggestions?

[SWKerr]

Have you tried setting this to false?
always_use_dshow_player=false

[vividweb]

yep. makes no difference at all.

[SWKerr]

Are you sure the DVB card is creating h.264 files? You can use something like tsMuxer to check it. If it is mpeg2 HD then you are playing with the wrong settings.

[vividweb]

I am sure it is an h.264 file. Sage identifies it as MPEG2-TS[H.264 1080i].

Media info gives the following result:
Format : MPEG-TS at 7 647 Kbps
Length : 5 GiB for 1h 29mn 44s 156ms
Video #0 : AVC at 6 732 Kbps
Aspect : 1440 x 1080 (1.778) at 29.970 fps
Audio #0 : AC-3 at 384 Kbps
Infos : 6 channels, 48.0 KHz

[Striker:WG]

have you used graphedit to see exactly which audio/video decoders your system is using to playback the files when not using Sage?

What version of Sage are you using? There is an updated mpeg demuxer in the last few beta versions that solved some playback problems for me (my issues were related to time sync when skipping through recordings). It may be worth trying the latest beta if you aren't already on it.

-Striker-